Live Read Write

Writing the writerly CV

2012-02-04T09:43:00.000+11:00

My professional CV has been in circulation in one iteration or another for well over a decade: a catalogue of passionless buzzwords. But when it comes to trying to break into the literary world, that lack of passion slaps me in the face.

I have spent years trying to sell my studies and writerly pursuits as relevant in the professional non-writing world. Now I need to do the exact opposite.

All that business-speak, reams of flow-charts and mission statements, all that jargon-riddled documentation, needs to somehow morph and be moulded into experience that is pertinent and relevant to the literary world.

I need to show why I should be picked above all the other budding 'industriests', that I am dedicated, conscientious, able to work to deadlines, enthusiastic, and that this enthusiasm will translate into producing f-off awesome work.

It’s harder than I thought.

I read over my newfangled CV. Everything turned topsy-turvy, Magic Faraway Tree-style. What will they make of my extra-curricular activities, the stuff that usually sits in the ‘yes, I do have a life outside of work’ category, suddenly thrust into the centrepiece? How can I make the transition from ‘hobby’ (read: die-hard passion) into ‘career’?

And then there are those ten prominent years of analysis and techie-speak, climbing the corporate ladder, which somehow seem like a waste of time, irrelevant, barely transferable. How can I make them fade into the background?

But I know they can't be faded, nor should they be. Those years haven't been wasted and those skills are transferable. If I've learned nothing else, I know I can pick up the ball and run with it when I need to.

So pick me, I say, let me learn and work from the bottom up, because everyone has to start somewhere.

-CP

Why you should never date a writer

2012-01-01T11:14:00.001+11:00

Over the years I have watched lovers watch me 'in progress' during one writing fit or another. Working to deadline, real or imagined, letting my body moulder. During these fits, food becomes sustenance, sex a kind of manic release, and excercise something you do when your retinas begin to burn. You shower and dress only when you are forced to leave the house, and any outside contact seems alien and slightly awkward. You also, oddly enough, lose your ability to speak. Your verbal vocabulary vanishes into incoherence, and you struggle to maintain the most basic conversation.

These are things I have known about myself for years, but struggled to make known to and understood by my friends, family, and partners. All they see is an anti-social, ill-tempered, crazed bitch who lives on stale crackers and refuses to get out of her manky pyjamas for stretches at a time. How often have I caught myself saying, 'I'll be human again soon, I promise.'

More recently I have had the opportunity to witness this from the other side.

My lover - a fellow writer - has attracted the interest of a publisher, so for the past month my phone calls have become rude interruptions, Saturday nights have been spent in the throes of lap-top passion, and I have been haunted by a vague scent-impression of male deodorant and the image of my lover wearing something other than cruddy track-pants.

I’d love to say that tumultuous madness is part of our charm.

'You're lucky I didn't tell you to fuck off for an entire two weeks,' he told me.

He's right; in his shoes I might have done the same.

I find this curiously alluring. We develop our own habits, our own process, but the one thing we share is obsession. In the lunatic hours of the morning we call it a hobby, a craft, a desire, but the reality is it's so much more.

...And I thought our self-absorbed delicate egos were the things to watch.

-CP

This post first appeared on Rhonda Perky's Bits

The dark corner

2010-11-12T11:47:00.000+11:00

Having just spent a week trying to write a series of light-hearted pieces (fun, quirky, you name it, I’ve tried it), I concede defeat. My story on Why Doodles are Funny turned into a diatribe on all the times I’ve been flashed at, my story on the Currency of the School-Yard became a piece on why I felt guilty trading my mum’s strawberry jam sandwiches, and my Friendship Rules 101 morphed into a tribute to friends lost and found.

‘Stop trying so hard,’ a friend said to me, ‘just have fun with it.’
‘But I’m trying to write something fun…’ I said.
‘You’re trying to write something funny.’

I pulled a poo-face at him and picked up my laptop. I looked at the spread of my week’s worth of pieces. It was like staring at a 3D picture – I could see the words on the page, the surface pattern, but not the sailboat underneath. Each of them was pinched and squeezed, being forced into a mould of wanting to be the next Benjamin Law or Marieke Hardy.

But I’m not either of those people. I am me. I write not from an idea, but from a feeling. I had been using the wrong part of my brain. I needed to step through the words on the page and into the story.

I opened a new document. Clean, white space.

I didn’t look for what I was going to write about, I listened for the feeling, waited for it to settle. Then I started typing. Out poured an article that flooded four pages. I bawled my eyes out the entire time and loved every minute. I read it over to myself. It wasn’t ‘fun’, but I had fun writing it.

I sent it to a few of my contacts to get a sense of whether or not I could make it work. ‘Is it too dark? Should I pair it with something light and quirky?’ I got some pointers, some impressions, and a postscript: ‘u don’t do light and quirky…u do dark!!!!!’

And so I find myself once more in the dark corner, in fiction and non-, writing about women who murder their lovers, abusive families, and submissive slave girls. Sure I can write lighter pieces when the mood takes me, but when I’m feeling dark, dark is what I do best. It’s what I write because it’s who I am.

Like everything else, I need to accept and make the most of it.

Sharing my share of another's creativity

2010-10-06T09:59:00.001+11:00

Recently I met a fellow writer and was privileged enough to workshop one of her pieces. It was a personal letter about the decay of a creative partnership which was also a relationship. The downfall of one became an emblem for the other. A beautifully melancholy tale, it described her experience sitting outside the creative process of another – a lover, a partner, watching his creation extend and morph beyond them.

What touched me most was her depiction of what it was like to experience the work of a lover and wonder where it came from. Music, art, writing, all comes from a place inside you that no one else can ever know. It is deep and it is raw.

It’s not something I had ever experienced from the other side. I didn’t know the ache of wanting to be inside that part, knowing you never will. Of wondering what your lover felt as they described one character’s love for another, one character’s hate for another. Wondering if they will ever feel a fraction of that for you.

Now I know.

It aches. As though someone was there, in that part of them, long before you and forever after, someone who stole it for any other.

I’m not jealous like this when I pick a book up off the shelf. Who is that author to me? And with any non-writer, non-artist, I might assume that part simply isn’t there.

But this is different.

Because I know what it’s like to write those words, to create them. I know it’s not creation at all.

And yet because I am a writer, I know that each piece, each character, is not its own entity, but a part of you. A part that exists both internally and externally. When I write, I write to discover; in a sense I am not a writer, I am a reader. I experience the suspense, the joy, the pain, the emotions, as they fill the page. If someone asks me where a story came from I can’t tell them. Perhaps I write to uncover it myself, as I dig and I dig.

Then I wonder, is it like that for him? Are his words real, or imagined? Perhaps they are cruel manipulation, suckering the reader, with no genuine emotion at all.

And then I realise where the pain comes from. From knowing I will never truly know.

-CP

her fetish

2010-10-01T09:57:00.000+10:00

Faddish words
a sullen unfettered milieu
Curtailed and mal-used
She would eat her own clichés
and vomit

Treat 'em mean

2010-09-21T06:00:00.000+10:00

One of the most frustrating, gruelling experiences for any writer is the process of submitting your work. It's scary enough putting yourself out there, but some publishers seem to make it unnecessarily hard, putting up all kinds of unexpected administrative barriers. Barriers than can leave a sour aftertaste and ultimately turn your audience away.

The number one rule spelled out to any writer is to follow the submission guidelines. I would like to counter this by asking that publishers make their guidelines clear, concise, and easy to follow. If you are receiving submission after submission in a way you don't like, chances are, you haven't made what you want very clear. Some publishers don't have a 'submissions' section on their website, or if they do, they simply say 'format in the usual way'. You'd be surprised how what publishers want varies. Not just formatting, but whether or not to put your name on your manuscript or story, whether you accept email submissions, whether you want a cover letter and what that cover letter should contain. State the obvious. You might be the first publication a budding author has tried. And if you want specific information, provide a form or template. All of this will make your lives easier.

Further, the submission guidelines should be up to date and accurate. Writers often encounter shifting deadlines, announced themes for issues that later disappear, or entire issues advertised that never eventuate. If you are not currently accepting submissions, keep a submissions page in place and state this on there. Give an estimate of when submissions are likely to re-open, or if you are taking a break from publication, let your writers know.

Consider posting what happens after a writer has submitted. Will submissions be acknowledged, by when, and how? When are writers likely to know the outcome and how will they be notified? Can writers expect to receive feedback? Do you have any feedback from previous submissions you can provide to steer writers in the right direction? Reading back-issues is always helpful, but it doesn't tell the writer what you have previously rejected and why. If there are particular things you don't like, specify them.

Of course, things don't always go to plan. If submissions don't open as expected or previously published information changes, update the information on the submissions page. And if you've published a closing date or a theme and this changes, give previous submitters the opportunity to revise to the new theme/deadline. But most importantly, acknowledge the previous information, advising how it has changed. Give your audience an indication that the information you are providing is reliable. Once your audience loses confidence in your online information, they will resort to contacting you directly, time better spent doing what you do best, searching for and publishing great work.

Now that your prospective authors know when and how to submit, what do you do with all those submissions?

An email acknowledgement goes a long way. Cheap and easy (especially if you keep a spreadsheet of the submissions as they come in), this will reduce the number of queries you field post-submission, and set expectations for when submitters can expect to hear the outcome. Then, stick to your schedule. Things don't go to plan? See above.

Don't have time to give individual feedback? Post some general feedback. What stood out to you? What should your writers be aiming for next time? Give them some pointers. Your judging team will have formed some impressions along the way, wading through. It might have been, 'Please don't make me read another story about X, Y, Z', but writers need to hear this. The result? Better quality, more appropriate submissions.

This is especially important if you have accepted money for submissions. Submitting work takes time and money. Often emerging writers don't get paid even if their work is accepted. At best they might receive a courtesy copy of the finished product. Acknowledging that commitment with some feedback or pointers (and I'm not talking an essay, but a few tips and tricks) goes a long way to keeping the relationship symbiotic, not parasitic.

Remember writers are also your readers. A bit of organisation and effort goes a long way. Employ your interns to do the leg work; that's what they're for. Because it's not whether you accept or reject a submission, it's how you accept or reject it, that will keep your audience loyal, and that means higher quality submissions, a bigger audience, and higher sales. And that is a win-win.

Reflections on 'The Lifted Brow No 7'

2010-09-13T17:09:00.000+10:00

***Warning: this is not a review and may contain spoilers***

Reviewing Ronnie Scott’s latest Brow hasn't quite satisfied my need to bang on about it. So rather than continue to bore my friends at parties (sorry guys!) by describing the stories that have stayed with me, the ones that kind of freaked me out (and that's quite a few), I've decided to blog about them instead in what I'm calling my 'opt-in reader response'. Read it at your peril :)

I'm never sure what to expect from a collection of short stories. There are usually lots of interesting ideas, hopefully a mix of familiar and unfamiliar names (I still cringe every time I pick up a copy of The Best Australian Stories and see the same names over and over and over -- writers who might be good, but who I'm not convinced can consistently be the 'best' year after year), and with any luck a handful of impressions that stay with me long after I've retired the volume to my back bookcase.

For some reason I can't yet place, I had a particularly strong response to The Lifted Brow No 7, the kind of response I haven't had since stumbling on Etchings 7: Chameleons (maybe there is something in a journal's 7th release?) Their stories aren't run-of-the-mill, but that hardly makes them exceptional. They don't always deal with comfortable, or even familiar, content, but nor do many others. Both have stories I would describe as interesting, original, and different, but again, this could be said of many other collections.

In both cases, I get the sense that the writers (and editors) have taken risks, but more importantly, that these risks have paid off. It takes a brave writer to deviate from the norm, but a talented writer to still produce a strong, cohesive, thought-provoking story, not just something kind of kooky. It also takes a brave and talented editor to recognise these types of pieces and select them.

As much as I hate singling stories out, I do want to share some examples from The Lifted Brow No 7 of the types of pieces that have stayed with me, stories I can't stop talking about, and that I will remember for a long time to come.

Robert Shearman's 'Cold Snap' is a story about choices that have irrevocable and long-reaching consequences. The protagonist naively makes a pact with the devil, only the devil comes in Santa-form:

‘Daddy gave Ben a hug. “I tried very hard,” he said. “I tried my hardest.”

And Ben now knew he should have been pleading for his father. But he’d been too busy riding his bike, spinning about, cutting those grooves into the snow. He’d been too busy for months, going to school, eating his fish fingers, pretending it was all okay, that it was all going to be okay. And it was now too late for him to plead. “Will I see my Daddy again?” Ben asked Santa.

Santa looked genuinely surprised that he’d asked. “Oh,” he said. “Maybe. But never like this. Never again like this.”’ (p. 37).

Ryan Call's 'My Scattering', is tragic and monstrous in the way of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. The protagonist is transformed by a freak accident from a gentle, loving husband, into an insatiable, sensation-seeking monster. Like an addiction, the lightning's effects completely take over the protagonist's life, pushing everyone away as he becomes a danger to those around him as much as to himself.

The protagonist's transformation is encapsulated in his lament on losing his relationship with his wife:

'Of all the confusing incidents of those first few weeks, it is the memory of my wife's face hidden behind the impersonal green of the mask that saddens me the most.' (p. 102).

On a similar man-turned-monster theme, Mike Meginnis has produced a modern Gothic tragedy in 'Zero'. Nicole's husband is in a vegetative state, but the doctor's have offered her a possible solution: a device implanted in his neck that will allow her to take 'the body' home and try to build some kind of life with him. Who knows, he may come around like others before him.

She tells her friends: '"He's been difficult. Unmanageable. They didn't tell me I was taking home a child."' And later, when it gets too much:

'He stared up at her dumbly, the faintest expressions of pain, suffering, anger, sadness, and pity flitting across his face like rodents crawling from one hidey-hole to another. His hands rose and fell. Rose and fell. She would make him snap. "Be a body!" she roared. The mayonnaise between her breasts mingled with sweat, began to drizzle down her abdomen. The installation fairly screamed. She said, "This is what you're for."' (p. 228).

It was like reading an allegory for the explosion of every minute resentment that can build and grow between a long-term couple, the utter breakdown of communication, the struggle for and loss of control, played out in monster-form.

Matt Bell's 'A Tree or a Person or a Wall' reminded me of George Orwell's 1984, or perhaps Animal Farm. As the story progressed and the boy lost his will for freedom, I felt a sense of choking entrapment. The man with rough hands, the boy in the locked room, and the albino ape called Sixes, each perpetuated a cycle of abuse, where memory and perspective were gradually distorted, leaving no choice but for the abused to become the abuser.

But the story which disturbed me most was Krissy Kneen's 'His Father's Son'. Even now, I squirm to remember the pubescent Rachel sharing her CD collection with Simon: '"You can do it," her voice is very soft, almost no sound to it, "I'd let you."' And Simon:

'Rachel is trembling. He can feel her knee shaking under his hand. Her eyes are squeezed tightly closed. Simon eases the fabric of her skirt back down. He scales the fragile body and presses his lips to hers and they barely part against his.

"Thank you," he tells her with the pop music thumping and all the little world of dolls watching him with their painted eyes. "You are a very pretty girl and I'd like to, but you wouldn't like it."' (p. 255).

This was a story that left me cold.

And now I realise why this volume has made such an impression. Stories like these are why I read. Not just to enjoy the moment, the immersion and the transportation, but to feel transformed when I come out the other side. I want my reading to alter the way I see the world, and ultimately the way I see myself.

A brow lift for 'The Lifted Brow No 7'

2010-09-09T13:03:00.000+10:00

Ever wondered what would happen if you threw Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in a blender with Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, then poured the resulting slab into a Pancake Parlour dessert jug (labelled MA) and sprinkled some Sergeant Pepper on top?

Having read Ronnie’s Scott’s latest ‘Brow’, I think I now have a vague idea.

For a journal without a theme -- at least not one editor Ronnie Scott remembered setting -- The Lifted Brow 7 has a distinct flavour. It’s just not like anything I've ever tasted. Certainly there are remnants of the Halloween edition Scott forgot commissioning, as well as a collection of ‘loose writing’, a bunch of names you’ll probably recognise but also a stack you won’t.

In this issue you'll encounter:

Nick Modrrzewki's stomach-turning ‘A Warm, Carpety Breakfast' (p. 45)
the newly-realised classic horror stories, 'My Scattering' by Ryan Call (p. 99) and 'Zero' by Mike Meginnis (p. 219)
Matt Bell's Orwellian 'A Tree or a Person or a Wall' (p. 75)
the coming out of Tim McGuire in 'So Let Me Get This Straight' (p. 87)
a whole lot of wrong-town discomfort in Krissy Kneen's 'His Father's Son' (p. 253)
the ultimate foot-in-mouth faux pas of a rapist's caretaker in Bryan Whalan's 'Gregory' (p. 73)
a good reason to never attend a B&S ball in Michaela McGuire's 'At the Wooroolin B&S Ball' (p. 51)
some dangerous dog-loving bogans I hope I never meet, in Blake Kimzey's 'Breeders' (p.115)
a family I hope never breeds again, in Bryce Wolfgang Joiner's 'Three Little Devils' (p. 205)
Arthur S Halsey Jr's erotically elusive 'The Dreamreapers' (p. 59)
a tribute to Bret Easton Ellis in Thuy Linh Nguyen's 'The Intern' (p.199)
the curiosity adorable but kind of creepy Mousykat in K. Reed's post-modern comic 'Kora + Mousykat in Lost Art' (p. 161)
and a story that will destroy any illusions you may have clung to about Santa Clause and his reindeer in Robert Shearman's 'Cold Snap' (I still haven't quite purged the image of Santa's cold 'soup-spattered teeth' (p. 25)... and that's before things turn savage.

TLB7 is an issue for lovers of new and interesting writing, those who aren't easily offended -- or squeamish. But be warned, it is ‘slabby’, there are ‘doodles’ aplenty, and if you manage to read it end to end without a break, expect to be satisfied, but exhausted!

-Christine Priestly.

Calling for amnesty on the return of borrowed things

2010-06-18T09:48:00.001+10:00

I have a confession to make. I am a serial borrower.

In my study is a shelf bursting with ‘things that don’t belong to me’. Worse, I have a shelf of ‘things that might belong to me’. The problem is I can’t recall what was gifted and was loaned. Books by the same author, one a present, one on loan, and I can’t remember which was which! No tell-tale dog-ears or creases to give it away. These goods belong to people who have cherished and maintained their possessions, forever pristine.

It’s not as though I’ve watched / read / consumed each item and then simply laid it aside. Most times the reason I still have the item is because I haven’t quite gotten around to consuming it. In fact I have a backlog of un-checked-out items that I’m still working my way through. Purchases, gifts, and loans.

Some I’ve had for years and years.

The difficulty now is so much time has passed; it’s like returning that Grade 6 library book you found under your bed having sworn it was returned, the one you fought the crusty librarian over to waive an outrageous $12.93 accumulated fine.

Returning them now is just embarrassing.

But suddenly I find myself as that crusty librarian.

Last night I went looking for my copy of The Emerging Writers’ Festival Reader. I know I have it somewhere; it was a birthday present. In my mind, a niggling memory of someone peering covetously over my shoulder… and me handing it to them. Here, of course you can have a loan of it. Another memory surfaces. Of the Reader sitting on my desk alongside a second hand copy of Sheri S Tepper’s Grass, the one I hunted down for months in dodgy second hand bookshops, and ended up ordering online, just to own a paperback copy at last. You’ll love this, I hear myself say to a friend, Why don’t you borrow it…?

Then I see the empty ‘B’ section of my DVD collection taunting me. The gaps where my copies of Big Love ought to be… Who did I loan them to??? And where did my Presidents of the USA CD vanish to, all those years ago…?

Are all these items perched on someone else’s ‘things that don’t belong to me’ shelf? Are they too embarrassed to fess up and return them to me?

It seems there’s only one thing to be done. I need to hold an amnesty swap-meet.

Not that I can be that candid about it. Instead I’ll host some sort of social gathering out in Boganburbia, and while the blokes are singeing the snags or carbonising onion rings, and the girls are peering at my pitiful stiletto collection, I can subtly point out the ‘things that aren’t mine’ shelf, and veer them past the pile of ‘things that might be mine’, and between rounds of bubbly top-ups and music exchanges, ask ‘where on earth did that Presidents CD go?'

With any luck, by the end of the night, as people step back inside to grab a drink or go to the loo, everybody’s belongings will have returned themselves to their rightful owners, discreetly and anonymously.

And unlike the haunted library book, no one’s things need end up discarded along with that strawberry jam sandwich and mouldy orange you never told your mum about, just for the sake of misplaced pride.

-CP